Bear Read Free

channel’s only four, five miles the other side of your place. We’ll have a good year. The river’s open early.“So this silent, creeping shore was Cary’s island.Sedge at the shore, then anonymous stones and trees.“There’s the point. We’ll round it in a minute.“There was something affectionate in Homer’s voice, as if he loved the place. He looked at her, and looked away. When they were around the riverbend, he pointed,and she saw the house looming white against the darkening sky. She sucked in her breath and waited; then, when they were close to the dock she saw that what she had thought was true: the house was a classic Fowler’s octagon.“Wow,” she said.“Pretty fine, isn’t it?” “It’s not mentioned in the textbooks. There’s an index of houses like that.” “Oh, we’re pretty cagey, up here.Nobody would know about this place who wasn’t running around in a boat; and none of us are telling. We send all the tourists down to gaggle at that house Longfellow was supposed to have written that Indian poem in,down there in the main channel. This place has been forgotten about, sort of, and around here we think it’s just as well. It’s a dilly, isn’t it? Wait til you come up the river on your own on a July morning. Nothing like it. Get the rope, Sim.” They tied up at a small dock,and Sim and Homer had the boat half unloaded before she was properly on her feet. “The relatives were fit to be tied when it was left to your outfit,“Homer went on.“Wanted the whole island shucked up in cottage lots. Government won’t allow that any more. Here,come on up and I’ll show you nside.“Staggering under the weight ofher suitcases, she followed Homer up the bank, over a wide green lawn (‘Sim here will mow her for you’) to the verandah of the house. “Hope you can manage without electric light,” Homer said. “There’s a couple of gas lights but they’re none too bright. You’ll need to work in a window. Plenty of windows, though.“She stood gazing at the house, letting his words slip after her. In the dusk, it was a gentle bulk. Its wide verandahs dimmed the windows of the ground floor.High trees arched over them.“Black birch,” Homer said. “There’s something special about those trees: it’s cooler under them than anywhere on a hot august day.““I don’t know that I’ll be here til August,” she murmured.“Nobody ever left this place that didn’t have to. That granddaughter in Cleveland would have given her eye teeth for it. Spent thousands trying to keep it from going to your outfit. Here, I’ve got the keys.“It was so long since she had seen a long, toothed house key that she had forgotten what it was called.“Didn’t need to lock up before the snowmobilers came,“Homer said.“You win some,you lose some.“Their footsteps sounded hollow on the porch. Homer opened the front door. She stepped inside and put her bags down in the front hall. She was surrounded by doors and windows.Ahead ofher was a broad stairwell leading to the top of the house. Smell of stove oil. Smell of mice. Smell of dust (last sun slanting low through small old window panes). Homer stood almost apologetically beside her, looking for her smile of approval. She looked up the stairs, to the left, to the right,and sniffed. Another smell, musky, unidentifiable but good. Homer turned to the right, opened the door, and laid her big type writer on a table in a dim room. The boy came with the duffle bags. Plonk.Plunk. He went back for more. “These houses are more or less round,” Homer said. “You come with me and I’ll show you around. Know how to light a kerosene lamp?““Yes.” “Show me.“An elaborate milk-glass lamp hung from the ceiling of the room she was in, but from somewhere else Homer produced a tin lantern like a railwayman’s. She lit it, and the room leapt into a glow of sofas and bow-legged tables,plant-stands and dead ferns. “You’ll be more interested in the kitchen.